Tag Archives: ecommerce business

Blogs, ecommerce, SEO

E-Commerce SEO Best Practices: A Comprehensive Guide

E-commerce has changed the way businesses operate for better by offering a global marketplace at the fingertips. However, to survive and grow in this competitive industry, having an effective e-commerce SEO strategy is crucial. This post will try to walk you through the e-commerce SEO to help you gain visibility and traction for your online business. Start with a commitment towards e-commerce SEO best practices and you will take your online business to new heights.

What is e-Commerce SEO?

E-commerce SEO is the process to optimize online store so it can secure a rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), hopefully more than just the first ranking. A well-optimized e-commerce website not only attracts more organic traffic but also increases conversions, resulting in higher revenue as best eCommerce SEO also covers some parts of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). To understand the importance of e-commerce SEO, let’s look into the industry’s best practices that have ensured longetivity of business for a lot of owners.

1. Look for the right and the important keywords

Keyword research is the cornerstone of SEO and it is the same for e-commerce SEO as well. You need to start by identifying relevant keywords for your products and product categories that potential customers may use to search for products that you offer. You will need to integrate these keywords naturally into your product descriptions, titles, and metadata to enhance search engine visibility. If you have category pages, you need to integrate relevant keywords on those category pages as well.

Your keyword can be informative for the category pages but search intent of your product page keywords shoud be purchase oriented.

2. Clear, Unique and Adequate Product Information

Ensure your product details are easily clear and concise, they should be presented in easily understandable language. And if you are selling internationally, it is necessary that you maintain your multilingual portal. Provide accurate information for each products such as sizes, colors, material, prices, and measurements. Maintaining a simple and clear pattern while explaining your product information makes it easy for both shoppers and the search engines to understand your products better.

More importantly, if you are reselling products, try to create your own version of the product descriptions. Using the same texts that supplier has provided you will not help you rank your product higher in SERP

3. User Experience foucsed Front-end Design and Site Architecture

A user-friendly website is crucial for E-commerce success. This is something that you should do before you make your e-Commerce website live. But, even if you missed it, you can always conduct A/B tests and multi-variate tests to ensure the best user experience. Prioritize responsive design to ensure your website functions seamlessly on various devices. Simplify navigation, enhance site speed, and create a visually appealing layout to engage visitors and encourage longer stays.

Site search and breadcrums are extremely important for e-Commerce SEO so they should be included in the design on every pages.

4. Leverage Rich Snippets

Implement schema markup to create rich snippets that display additional information in search results. This can include ratings, prices, and availability, enhancing the attractiveness of your products and encouraging clicks. If your products have the tendency to collect user feedback, it is a great leverage for your e-Commerce SEO.

5. Product Images are your Assets

High-quality images play a pivotal role in E-commerce. Optimize images for speed without compromising on quality. Use descriptive file names and alt tags to help search engines understand the content of your images. Even Amazon prioritizes a 1000 px image to enable the image zoom feature. Furthermore, as you are the controller of your website, if you maintain a consistent background for all of your product images, that will help in further CRO activities.

Apart from the product images, you can also publish blog posts in your e-Commerce website with different usages of the products or product categories. Optimize those images with proper caption, image description, and alt texts to benefit from SEO.

6. Create Engaging Content

Produce valuable content such as blogs, guides, or videos related to your products and industry. Engaging content not only educates and entertains your audience but also attracts backlinks and improves search engine rankings. Again, do not miss out on the opportunity offered by the user generated contents such as feedback. Encourage your buyers to leave feedback for your products on your e-Commerce site.

Even if you are running your e-Commerce marketing on a multi-channel marketing model, the citations of your website and products on the marketplaces will help to improve your eCommerce SEO.

7. Prioritize Mobile Optimization

With the ever-increasing surge in mobile usage, ensuring your e-Commerce site is mobile-responsive is crucial. Google prioritizes mobile-friendly sites in search results, making mobile optimization a vital component of E-commerce SEO. If your website is based in WordPress CMS, you could even use some plugins to create a progressive web app.

This will allow your customers to save your website as an icon on their mobile devices. And in result, you will have repeating visitors which will further improve your e-Commerce SEO.

8. Harness the Power of Reviews

Encourage customers to leave reviews for your products. If you are a new e-Commerce business, you could even run promotional offers for customers who leave reviews for your products. Positive reviews not only instill trust in potential buyers but also contribute to higher search rankings. Respond to reviews promptly to show your commitment to customer satisfaction.

As per the negative product reviews, they are not a matter to be scared of, rather take them as an opportunity to show your dedication on ensuring customer satisfaction.

9. Implement Local SEO Strategies

e-Commerce business holds the potential to grow beyond the national boundaries but still an e-Commerce business can benefit from the local customers. So one should never underestimate the benefits that can be derieved from Local SEO.

Claim your Google My Business listing, Bing Places listing and ensure your business details are accurate. Focus on building citations in relevant local directories to boost local search visibility.

10. Monitor and Adapt

Regularly analyze your E-commerce site’s performance using tools like Google Analytics and Search Console. In order to track your visitors from bing, make sure to integrate bing webmaster tool in your site also. Track keyword rankings, traffic trends, and user behavior. Use this data to make informed adjustments to your E-commerce SEO strategy.

If you want to use the tools that make it easier for your SEO activities, you can opt in trial or premium of Ahrefs or SEMRush also.

Finally…

A few confusion about eCommerce SEO which needs to be cleared…

1.”SEO is a one-time fix.”

This may come as a surprise to many but e-Commerce SEO requires devotion and ongoing optimization for success. Take it this way: The people get tired of the same thing and they start to think differently, then they act differently, so the search engine algorithms have to be updated, and to get the favor of those algorithms, the changes in your website needs to be made. These will not be the drastic changes very often, but will be minor changes regularly. For those who carry this misconception, should understand that even if you rank for certain products, you will need to carry out the ongoing activities in order to maintain your rank.

2. “More keywords mean higher rankings.”

Quality over quantity – focus on relevant and natural keyword usage. Keyword stuffing is punishable by the Google’s algorithm. Further, it is the thought process of your customers that you should integrate in your contents, more keywords will do you no good.

3. “Paid ads replace SEO.”

Paid ads complement SEO, but organic search traffic is essential for long-term success. You can even collect accurate data from the paid ads for how much can you increase your sales if you rank organically in certain keywords. Or you can also run paid ads to run your A/B or Multi-variate experiments when optimizing for CRO.

4. “Any backlink is good.”

Quality backlinks from authoritative sites matter; spammy backlinks can harm your rankings. For this reason, you will need to run your backlink audit process and perform links disavow activities at a regular interval.

5. “Meta keywords boost rankings.”

Meta keywords hold little value; focus on optimized titles and descriptions. Your URL should be user friendly, meaning, easy to remember and people will remember that what they searched for.

6. “Duplicate content is harmless.”

Duplicate content can lead to lower rankings and confusion for search engines. Write original and unique product descriptions. And for e-Commerce SEO, ensure that two urls are not pointing to the same product. For eg: /tag/product1, /category/product1, /product1

7. “Focusing only on Google is enough.”

Optimize for other search engines and platforms, as well as voice search. Apart from optimizing for Google, you  will need to work on off-page SEO for ECommerce also. This means, you will need to submit your products to Facebook marketplace, create product tags on Instagram, submit your products on Google Shopping and other comparison sites also.

8. “SEO is a secret formula.”

The act of SEO is a blend of science and art. SEO best practices are accessible; it’s about strategic implementation and continuous learning. Apart from that, it is about understanding the business and the customers and their needs and wants and consistently working to deliver them.

9. “Site speed isn’t crucial.”

Slow loading times can lead to higher bounce rates and lower rankings. For this reason alone, you need to look into the Technical SEO. Some of the quickly identified culprits are uncatched contents, un-minified css and js codes, unnecessarily bulky images, server location and quality, multiple url redirects.

10. “Social media doesn’t impact SEO.”

Social signals indirectly affect SEO by driving traffic, engagement, and brand visibility. In publicly published social media posts, we can only guess how many search engine bots are gathering information and sending out the singal to the algorithms.

Blogs, ecommerce, online business

10 things to do before launching eCommerce ad campaigns

Whether digitizing your brick-and-mortar store or following the now popular dropshipping or affiliate stores, you will launch an eCommerce site. However, generating traffic on your site is not an easy process. For this, you can either go with the organic promotion which takes time, and yields returns for a longer duration, or you could run your ad to immediately get sales.

It is needless to say that Facebook boosts, Google ads, and banner ads, are some of the popular ad campaigns these days. However, we often come across people who, despite doing everything correctly on their ads, don’t see sales. What they fail to realize is that running ads is the way to bring visitors to your site. For conversion, there are other things that need to be aligned.

Please don’t confuse this post with conversion rate optimization, below are the pointers of what may be causing the leak of your visitors from your site. 

10 things to do before launching eCommerce ads - Part 1

1. Check the links

One of the most common mistakes is not checking all the links. Check all the category links and product links. If you have posted some blogs on your site, to link back to the products, make sure that the links are correct. And if you have promoted your products off-site, check those as well.

2. Look through the eye of a first-time visitor

After looking at the e-commerce site hundreds of times, we simply don’t see the issues that seem like a blunder to any first-time visitor. Sit down with some of your pals and ask for honest feedback. You need to understand what the first-time impression of your site is. For this purpose, you can even create professionally done landing pages for different product categories, if doing so for individual products is not possible.

3. Identify and Fix site speed issues

Even if you find your site speed normal, most of the visitors may not. It depends upon a lot of factors but the most common ones are script compressions, server locations, and image size rendering. There are various tools that can help you optimize your e-commerce site speed. You can use the Google Page speed insight tool to guide you. If the technical side is not your forte then you can hire some developer to fix it for you.

4. Manage conversion path

What are conversion paths or funnels? Let’s put it this way. The journey that a visitor covers after landing on your site till the checkout page; from your homepage to the product category page to a single product page and through the checkout page. Give some time to this. Your product category is important for SEO. Your images should allure the visual traffic. And, your product descriptions should entice logical shoppers. This will be a process but you should keep thoughts about this when you initially launch your e-commerce.

5. Test payment gateways

It is not an uncommon practice to use multiple gateways. However, if you yourself don’t go through the conversion path and test the checkout process, you won’t know what kind of experience your buyer will go through. We’ve often found that the sites are developed and the sandbox account is still used for the payment gateway. What a loss! Further, make sure to use multiple payment gateways to make it easy for your customers to pay for their purchases according to their preferences.

10 things to do before launching eCommerce ads - Part 2

6. Setup analytics tools

Immediately after launching your e-commerce, you may start boosting your Facebook Post with the target to bring in more site visitors. Though Facebook Insights gives how many click-through events took place, you also need more information for future purposes. So it is only wise to set up Google Analytics or other analytics tools. If you want to see the session recording of the visitors on your site, setting up tools like Hotjar is also a great option. After viewing a few sessions, you’ll definitely know what to change in your site for more sales.

7. Your product reviews on & off-site

The purpose of your e-commerce site is to host your products online. And the purpose of launching ad campaigns is to grab the attention of potential buyers for those products. So, when you have someone’s attention, they will try to know more. Exactly, they want to know about the experience of using those products. What gives that idea? Reviews. The impression of others using your product is valuable if good and can be scary if bad. So, try to make the best use of your customer reviews, within your site. Also, don’t miss to perform a quick check about your business review off-site in trust pilot and sites alike, if you have been operating for some time.

8. Social profiles

Where do your potential customers mostly hang out? You should have an idea about that, but having an idea only isn’t enough, you need to make your presence there. You should understand the lingo and culture of those social platforms. Along with that, though maintaining multiple social profiles may be a bit tough, you also need to maintain your brand voice. It is better to handle this with some social media planner tools like Hootsuite or something similar.

9. Study the competition

This needs to be a continuous process. You need to occasionally check the promotions that your competitors are running. Is it the price discount on products? Or, is it free shipping? They probably introduced a product bundle. Has the price of similar products gone down? What strategy are they using and is it working? Keep a keen eye on these questions before launching your ad campaigns.

10. Few articles on your niche sites

Consistent practice of posting a few articles will go a long way to increase your sales. But more than that, posting product unboxing experiences or detailed product reviews will help the visitors understand that you have used the product and are confident to sell it. Most of the time, people try selling products that they themselves haven’t used. Avoid misrepresenting your products by using them yourself or getting honest reviews from your close ones, and post those as articles on your e-commerce.

Bonus: Cookie, refund, shipping policies

Cookie consent and different law compliance is not something that you can ignore. Your e-commerce site generates data and you will use it at some point. So, better stay on the safe side from the very beginning. At the very least, implement GDPR and other such law compliance systems. This will also create an impression that you are in the business for the long run. Online buyers are concerned about receiving the product as they expect, so create a refund policy to ease the stress of your buyers. Further, your shipping is a whole different story, however, try to keep your thoughts about prompt flawless delivery.

Happy Selling.

Signing out…
Peace!!!

Blogs, online business

Starting eCommerce? Define success or take chance to fail. Your choice

Whether being your own boss or adding an extra stream of income or trying what so many people are doing, almost everyone has at least once thought of launching an eCommerce. However, not every eCommerce business that is started meets the expectation in terms of revenue or even on the part of working flexibility.

So, if you are also thinking about starting an eCommerce business, I’d first want to ask a few questions, if I may…

  1. Are you already operating a brick-and-mortar store?
  2. How much time, effort, and other resources can you invest?
  3. What do you want to achieve from the new eCommerce site?
  4. Can you take care of the technical issues in eCommerce?

These are the questions that will help you to set your expectation and successfully meet them. Why do I say so? Let me explain.

In case you are already operating a brick-and-mortar store:

You have a business and you are looking forward to stepping up in the digital arena. What I get from this is, you either want to get more customers from distant locations. Or, you also want customers to be able to find your products and be able to order even when your physical store is closed.

With respect to time, effort, and other resources investment:

It is barely the case that the resources you have are unlimited. So, you definitely need to set a boundary for your investments and the expectations for your returns. If you are already operating a physical store then you need not worry much about the business operations like inventories but if not, it may not be a part-time gig. So, monetary investment in development of an eCommerce site can start from around $500(or less) to a higher range depending upon what features you want. Then again, you may want to start your eCommerce ads campaign to boost sales.

So, if you invest X amount of time and Y amount of money, you want f(x,y) return. This is what you need to define.

Regarding what you want to achieve from your eCommerce:

It is almost every time that any business owner will want to receive more orders, more customers, and more revenue. For that, you need to work on Conversion Rate Optimization but not just that you’ll also need to work on the different aspects of micro-conversions of your eCommerce business. Along with that, you should also set units of measurement or KPIs for your other expectations.

Ability to take care of the technical issues:

Technical aspects of eCommerce will bake the noodles of many not-so-tech-savvy entrepreneurs. If you are among them, either you should hire a development team who also provides a support contract or you should opt in for some SaaS eCommerce solution providers. Apart from that, the development of the eCommerce site is not just the technical aspect. You’ll also come face to face with the advertisement platforms for which you can learn gradually or seek the help of professionals. For both the development and advertisement aspects, it is better that you make the decision ahead.

For further information on the planning of your eCommerce business, please check my article on LinkedIn.

Signing out…
Peace!